Ned's Six
by Shiva-J
Summary: One morning Ned Stark felt compelled to ride into the Wolfswood where he found a woman in a red dress, lost and near death, speaking a language that he didn't understand, her name was Caprica.
1. Ned's Six

_**Ned's Six**_

 _"Are you alive?"_

That was the first thing that Eddard Stark had ever said to the mysterious woman he had found lost in the woods, freezing to death when he had gone out on a lonely ride one early morning.

To his dying day Lord Stark could never say what compelled him to simply dress himself at first light, head to the stables, saddle a horse and ride on out into the wolfswood without a word to anyone.

But about an hour's ride into the forest he had found her, a figure in a whorish red dress, stumbling in the snow, clearly lost and in danger of dying.

He had called out to her, for some reason asking if she was alive and berated himself for it, but it did attract her attention, so intent on her plight she hadn't heard the galloping of his horse.

She turned around and Ned felt his heart skip a beat, she was beautiful, stunningly eerily beautiful with short cut Targaryen blond hair, her lips painted red with expensive looking makeup, her skin seemed luminous and soft even as it froze, and her figure in that scandalous dress was like an hourglass, giving off a strange mixture of innocence and sexuality that Ned found strangely alluring.

Ned got off the horse and walked to her, offering her his cloak, she took it gratefully, speaking to him in a language that he didn't understand, but he knew she was grateful.

He got her up on the horse and brought her back to Winterfell, thankful that it was still early enough that not many were awake to see their liege-lord riding back with a mysterious woman wrapped in his cloak clinging to him.

Ned had called on Maester Luwin to translate, but he knew not the language she spoke. However through a series of gestures the girl was able to convey that her name was Caprica and that she had no memory of how she had wound up in the wolfswoods.

Despite the misgivings of his wife, Ned gave her a place in his household, instructing Luwin to teach her the Common tongue to employ her as a servant.

Caprica learned to speak and read the Common tongue with stunning swiftness, even while working as a servant for the house. Lady Stark's worries about her being a disruption were disproven since the beautiful woman never seemed to actively entice men to her.

Granted many did try, a few more forcefully than others, and there were a number of strange accidents, broken arms and legs but the men who got them refused to speak of how it happened.

Caprica just smiled when asked of that, but she did speak of her last memories, memories of being in a beautiful home far away with a man that she loved, warning him of an attack before there was an awful noise outside and a flash of fire and wind striking the building, bringing it crashing down upon them.

A few months went by, the castle returned to its normal routines as it adjusted to the new servant, the servant who had a habit of talking to people, giving them ideas, ideas that proved to be improvements on what they were doing.

Maester Luwin was delighted with her suggestions on cataloging the contents of the Starks library, another suggestion to Mikken had him developing a new means of making steel, and another suggestion resulted in a local brewer improving the quality of the alcohol he made.

And yet despite this she had very little knowledge of womanly things, like sewing or spinning, causing Ned to wonder at the puzzle that she was.

He pondered this even as he and his sons had found an abandoned litter of six direwolves in the wolfswoods, and when the King and the Royal Court came to visit him.

Ned's ponderings were cut short by his son Bran having fallen from the First Tower and being in a coma, then the assassin came and tried to kill him and succeeded in cutting Catelyn badly, but his throat was torn out by the Direwolf.

He stayed at Cat's side as she died in her bed from her bleeding and the infection that had set into the wound, and knew that he had to find the truth of all this.

He became Hand of the King and brought his daughters and a small household with him to King's Landing, leaving Robb in charge of Winterfell.

That household included Caprica, who now in simple dresses seemed to enter his thoughts more and more often.

While she slipped into the background to others, even as he worked at dealing with the sheer level of mess that Robert had made of the Kingdoms, Ned found reason to have her in his presence. She whispered things to him, things she had heard and seen, revealing the depths of corruption that existed in this city.

Caprica filled a void in him, her blue eyes and soft skin and seductive yet naïve smile arouse him more than he had ever felt and so one night while going over figures in Littlefinger's books she had entered his chambers with some food.

Something about that night had him more energetic than usual, perhaps it was restlessness, perhaps a desire to feel alive when he felt so dead, or perhaps it was simply fate.

The pair found themselves kissing, caressing, undressing, and learning of each other's flesh. It was the first of many nights that Ned would have her, and Caprica would have him.

After that first night Caprica became a more obvious presence in Ned's life, he gave her more expensive clothes (with her favoring red fabrics), money, and a few jewels, she was openly at his side when he met men on business in what Caprica called 'his office'. Neither one not caring that she was becoming knowing as 'Ned's Red Woman' or 'Ned's Red Whore'.

Even as he investigated Jon Arryn's mysterious death, Bran's crippling, Catelyn's murder, and how it all seemed to tie back to the Lannisters, Caprica was there, revealing the secrets of King's Landing.

She claimed to have seen the Kingslayer and his sister, the King's own wife, having relations with each other in a chamber, and that she was not the first servant to see them like this.

She claimed that Varys was scheming with a man from Pentos to cause the Starks and Lannisters to go to war in ten years' time to wreck the realm and restore the Targaryens to the throne.

She claimed that Pycelle had become a Lannister toady and was helping Tywin Lannister put the crown further and further into his own debt out of a desire to return to power.

She claimed that Petyr Baelish was cheating the crown out of millions in dragons and funneling the money through his various businesses in King's Landing and Gulltown, making him rich at the realms expense.

She claimed these things and gave him proof, irrefutable proof that Ned presented to Robert as the results of his own hard work.

It was Caprica who helped him plan the 'Day of Dupes' in which Robert brought everyone to court with the only armed men present being Ned's loyal retainers dressed as Goldcloaks and arrested them all, making sure to have sent out copies of the proof of all this and announcement of the arrests across the Seven Kingdoms.

Joffrey Waters, and Tommen Waters were sent to the Wall, Myrcella Waters was sent to the Silent Sisters, Jaime Lannister and Cersei Lannister (stripped of all their titles) were publicly executed.

Varys managed to escape the Black Cells and was believed to be fleeing to the east; Petyr Baelish was given over to the Iron Bank as punishment for his fraud, Robert promising to assist them in recouping their losses from Baelish's fraud, mostly through confiscating Baelish's assets.

Though even Caprica conceded it would be many years before the Iron Bank got it's due...

If Tywin hadn't given into his rage and attempted to rebel against the Iron Throne, a seemingly foolish action that saw the near, full might of the Seven Kingdoms against him.

The Ironborn launched devastating raids against the Westerlands in exchange for the return of Theon Greyjoy, the Reach, the North, the Riverlands, the Stormlands, Dorne, and the Crownlands rose against Tywin.

The Vale joined them after Lysa Tully tried to have the Valelords rise against the Iron Throne as well and was driven from power; she went insane in her comfortable imprisonment, the Regency of her son falling to House Royce which roused the Vale in defense of Robert I.

In exchange for support Robert married Lady Margaery Tyrell, while Sansa Stark betrothed Harrold Hardyng, the heir to the Vale.

Tywin's Rebellion was a brief, bloody affair in which even his own vassals quickly abandoned him in favor of the Iron Throne, Tywin killed himself by jumping off of the top of the Rock once the city of Lannisport fell under siege, his son and heir Tyrion Lannister quickly surrendered and kept the Rock in exchange for giving up a vast amount of gold to the crown, several hostages, and his father's broken body for Robert to have hacked up and the pieces distributed across Westeros as a warning to future rebels.

It was there in the soldiers camps, among the tents of the great lords of Westeros that Lord Eddard Stark of the North stood with Caprica at his side, a figure of simultaneous scorn and respect, innocence and lust, beauty and strength, love and hate.

Looking at Lannisport as the men began to pack up and ready to leave that she told him something that would change both their lives.

 _"Ned, I'm pregnant."_


	2. Six of Ned

**Six of Ned  
**

 _"There must be some way out of here... said the Fool to the Thief..."  
_  
It had been nearly two years since she had been brought to this world. Two years since she had been on the planet Caprica in the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. Two years since she was the key to disabling the Colonies defensive systems, allowing her people, the Cylon's to kill the entire human race.

Thirty billion souls, all dead, and the blood was on her hands.

 _"There's too much confusion... I can't get no relief..."  
_  
In her two years on the Colonies she had fallen in love with a man, Gaius Baltar, a man whom she had to seduce to complete her mission. A man of many contradictions, a genius who was foolish about many things, a coward who was stronger than he looked, handsome on the surface but his selfishness tended to cancel that out once you knew him. And yet...

She had fallen in love with him anyway.

 _"Merchant men they drink my wine..."  
_  
But when the first nuclear bombs had detonated in Caprica's atmosphere, signaling the end of the race of Man, she had tried to save him. The blast wave of one of the nuclear detonations had caused Baltar's home to come crashing down upon them. She had shielded him with her body, her synthetic organic body, the pinnacle of the Cylon's evolution from Machines and into something new...

 _"Plowmen they dig my earth..."  
_  
She closed her eyes and felt the child growing her womb, the child conceived in a miracle of love between herself and the man that had found her when she had been brought to this world after the end of the Colonies.

She had taken a name, the name of the world she had helped to murder.

Caprica.

 _"None of them along the line... Know what any of it is worth..."  
_  
She heard a voice, and then realized that she had been singing.

Caprica looked up to see that Ned had returned to their rooms in Red Keep, even though it was obvious to all that Ned wished to return to the North. However in the aftermath of Tywin's Rebellion there were still plenty of things that needed to be sorted out.

It was either good fortune, or the will of the One True God that had placed her on this world, and put her where a man like Eddard Stark could find her, save her, and most miraculously of all...

Love her.

While Eddard sat down on the edge of the bed, and she spoke to him while he kicked off his boots, her thoughts were only half on giving him advice.

She was still thinking of everything that had transpired, sneaking around and learning to use weapons behind everyone's backs. How she had planted a few suggestions in the minds of men about Winterfell out of boredom, and had seen a few of them take root. Already the North's improved alcohol and 'Northmen Steel' was becoming a popular trade item, netting the Starks a pretty penny.

The death of Ned's wife, from something that would have been easily treated with medicine that Caprica didn't have, had weighed on her. She had to stand there silent and helpless as Catelyn died of an infection from an assassin's blade. That was when she stopped thinking about mere survival, she began to think of how to truly make this primitive world a better place.

Caprica had gotten a place in Ned's household when he traveled to King's Landing, there she slipped into the background, no one noticed servants, which allowed her to learn things that her so-called 'betters' wanted to stay hidden. She had discovered a few secret passageways that Varys had assumed only he knew of, she had encountered Ned's daughter Arya in the tunnels and overheard Varys scheming to bring down the Baratheon dynasty. At that point Caprica decided that she would become Ned's spymaster, and hopefully guide him towards fixing the very real problems that this land, Westeros, had.

What she didn't expect was that Ned had been watching her, just like the first time they had met in the Wolfswood. In retrospect it made sense, with his wife murdered, surrounded by men with false smiles and sharp knives, out of his element compared to the North, he needed something, anything, to keep from drowning in despair.

And so... she had become his mistress, and for the second time in her life... Had fallen in love.

At that point, Westeros was hers.

It was through him that she arranged for the Day of Dupes, it was through him that she began the task of sorting out the Kingdom's finances, it was because of him that she got to travel with Robert's forces as Tywin Lannister tried to rebel in revenge for the execution of his beloved children for the crime of incest.

It was because of him that the miracle was growing inside her, something her people believed that God wanted them to do, but had failed to achieve.

To be fruitful... To have children...

Now with Tywin's Rebellion done with, and Robert wedded to a new Queen who was already pregnant, even with Summer ending on this world's strangely distorted seasons, life was returning to normal.

Even as she listened to Ned talking about the latest meeting with the Iron Bank representatives, and his private meeting with them about setting up his own account and a branch of the bank in King's Landing, Caprica wondered what the future held.

Her dreams had gotten strange... Filled with images of dragons and men made of ice with eyes even bluer than hers, a man embedded in a tree glaring at her with an eye brimming with anger... And the strangest, and yet most exhilarating one of all. A dream of a young man in elaborate white painted armor, with white-blond hair and grey eyes wielding a Valyrian steel blade, behind him a city was rising up on the banks of a river she didn't recognize.

Caprica couldn't help but suspect that the dreams were due to her pregnancy, then again there had never been a pregnant robot before, so she couldn't quite shake the feeling of unease.

As Ned finished talking and she had no advice left to give, he smiled ruefully as he realized that she had gotten him out of most his clothes and was massaging his shoulders.

 _"Ned?"_

 _"Yes, Caprica?"_

 _"Have you thought of names? For our child."_

 _"Aye."_

There was a pause before Caprica spoke up once more.  
 _  
"Well?"_

 _"Edrick if the child is a boy, Lyra for a girl."_

 _"Edrick was one of the Kings of Winter, yes?"_

 _"Aye."_

 _"And Lyra would be for your sister?"_

 _"Aye."_

Caprica found herself kissing him, feeling a single tear drop wet on his face as she did so. As the first kiss gave way to a second, then a third, and then so much more, her worries and fears melted away. However, there was another thought present, a memory, a memory of a song that she could never remember where it came from.

And yet it felt like something from childhood, which was truly bizarre since she didn't have a childhood.

A song that she had been singing to the child growing inside of her.

In this moment in Red Keep there was only Ned within her, and the song...

She had no idea what it meant, but it was beautiful.

Like life, even on this primitive and cruel world.

* * *

Note: 'The Song' is All Along the Watchtower by Bob Dylan, which was used in Battlestar Galactica (reimagined), the Bear McCreary version is the one she was hearing.


	3. Arya and the Six

**Arya and the Six**

 _"Who is there? Show yourself!"_

 _"Don't be frightened milady, I'm one of your father's servants."_

 _"I'm no Lady, you mistake me for my sister."_

That was the first time that Arya could remember speaking to the mysterious new servant that had attached herself to her father's household in Winterfell. However those words were not spoken in the North but in King's Landing, in the system of secret tunnels that she had accidently stumbled into during her training with Syrio.

Arya remembered seeing the woman about, after all an extremely beautiful woman with the Targaryen look tended to stick out, but while Arya could recall hearing rumor of the woman becoming attached to Maester Luwin in some manner, and several outlandish rumors of her origins, this was the first time she truly met the woman face to face.

Caprica, the new servant, the woman who informed her that she had been investigating the tunnels of Red Keep ever since the Starks had first come to King's Landing.

When she asked why, Carpica asked if Arya could keep a secret, when she gave her consent, Caprica admitted to working as her father's spymaster.

Arya's surprise at her father's dishonorable actions amused the servant, who pointed out that King's Landing was a viper's den filled to the brim with dark secrets and if her father did not learn them, he could wind up dead.

When Caprica offered to show her the way out, Arya refused, she had demanded that Caprica teach her some of the routes instead.

To her dying day, Arya could have sworn she saw amusement flash across Caprica's face before she consented.

It proved to be quite fruitful since during their explorations they found the vaults where the dragon skulls of the House Targaryen had been stored away after the downfall of the Mad King.

Then they overheard a conversation between two men, one was a fat merchantman, but the other... The other was identified as Varys by Caprica once they had heard more than enough.

They waited until the pair of conspirators had departed to leave as well, and during their return journey Caprica requested Arya's silence since her investigations were not yet over.

 _"Why do you do this?"_ Arya asked once they were out of the tunnels, covered in filth and hoping that they wouldn't be spotted before they could get cleaned up.

Caprica seemed surprised by the question before covering it up with, _"Because your Lord father saved my life in the Wolfswood, and because knowledge is power. In this wretched place, power isn't everything. It's the only thing."  
_  
Those words haunted Arya in the days and weeks ahead, she found herself taking her training and studies a bit more seriously, and in her explorations of King's Landing she found herself listening a bit more to what was going on around her. Not just the daily lives of the smallfolk of the city, but her peers among the cities nobility.

And she found ways to speak to Caprica when they weren't being watched.

Caprica appreciated the help, confiding in her some of the things she was doing for her father, creating a network of spies she called 'her eyes', and giving Arya some advice on how to hide in plain sight.

No one looked at a servant sweeping a broom more than once, or delivering a meal, or in Arya's case being a girl, who if she kept quiet could overhear much from those too foolish to realize that children could understand much more than the adults realized.

And so... Arya did her part to help her father's spymaster, and as the foul nature of the city became apparent to her, Caprica and her father launched the Day of Dupes, in which they duped all of the enemies of King Robert in a single day by having Robert hold court... But quietly altered the rotation of the Goldcloaks so that they could be replaced with her father's men, dressed as Goldcloaks and arrested the whole nest of traitors in one, fell swoop.

What Arya hadn't expected was Lord Lannister to rise in rebellion, then again it made sense, with his children accused of crimes against the crown the man's pride wouldn't let him just sit back and let them be killed. However Tywin found himself fighting the whole of Westeros and committed suicide when even his vassals abandoned him with stunning swiftness. Arya suspected that the only reason that the Lannisters still held the Rock was because of that, and the offer of the Imp to pay off the Crown's debts and forgive the ones owed to House Lannister.

Even now, in the aftermath of Tywin's Rebellion, Arya could see the rotting heads of the Lannister twins, the Kingslayer and the Brotherfucker once known as Queen Cersei, the filthy lying thief that was called Littlefinger had been handed over to the Iron Bank directly, and even her idiot sister Sansa knew that the man would suffer for _years_ before being allowed to die. The former Grand Maester supposedly died of a heart attack on his way to the Wall, but Arya read between the lines of what Caprica had told her and believed that the woman had had the man poisoned.

As for the incest spawn... Arya couldn't help but feel sorry for Tommen and Myrcella, but had publicly laughed at Joffrey's pathetic mewling attempts to save himself. It mattered not, Joffrey and Tommen were sent to the Wall, Myrcella to the Silent Sisters, even with Stannis Baratheon, freshly returned from Dragonstone calling for their executions.

From her vantage point among the crowd of courtiers, thinned out a bit from before the Day of Dupes but still fairly large, she could see the man now, listening to Robert on the Iron Throne speaking to a petitioner about the tax rate on a honey farm... Arya wasn't sure what that would be called precisely, but she did see Stannis and his younger brother Renly off to the side, watching this with faces that barely hid their boredom. At Stannis's side was that Red Priestess that many whispered was his mistress, it had amused Arya to see the woman and Caprica meet, both in their red dresses, though the designs that Caprica had commissioned from the tailors had been much, much more scandalous.

She knew for a fact that the dresses, with their red silk, and their bare arms, bare shoulders, and shortened skin hugging skirts that had shocked the court weren't even the most lurid of Caprica's creations. There were several that were basically some thin fabric that covered the breasts and stomach in the front and were held together in the back with some thin ribbons and nothing else. Her father had outright forbidden the woman, his spymaster and mistress from wearing those in public.

And that was another thing... Arya wasn't sure if she liked the idea of her father taking up with Caprica like this. But there was little she could do about it, especially now that Caprica was pregnant with her father's second 'natural child'.

She had sent a letter to her sister in the Vale, with her new betrothed the 'heir' to the Vale about that, the response was surprisingly accepting. Privately, Arya couldn't help but wonder how much seeing Joffrey being torn down so publicly had affected her sister, besides the hysterical crying fit from the initial revelation.

Still... It was nice to see her father seem happier, since Mother's murder by the damned Lannisters he had clearly been drowning in despair.

Even Robert seemed better now, his Tyrell Queen wasn't at court this day, saying she had taken slightly ill that morning, which had the rumors flying about a pregnancy. Arya hoped it was true, it would give the realm a clear succession and keep his brother's from fighting for that ugly throne.

However, as the new Grand Maester, Marwyn had told her during a tutoring session, the realm was still unsettled. Varys the Spider, that dangerous schemer had escaped his imprisonment in the Black Cells and had fled to the east, where the Targaryen claimants lived in exile and were last reported to be allied with the Dothraki.

Then there were the reports from the Wall that a new King Beyond the Wall was gathering an army that the Night's Watch would be hard-pressed to stop, even with their advantages.

Arya suspected that once this nonsense about honey was done with the real business would begin, gathering forces to march to the Wall to beat back the Wildings.

Arya looked over at her father, at his side was the woman who she suspected at being in the center of so much, and yet so enigmatic as to cast doubt on what exactly she was. A spy? A mistress? A whore? A beauty? A bastard of Valyria?

Arya had no real answers, the only thing that hinted at Caprica's origins was the woman's mention of a 'God' she worshiped, a God she claimed was love. Mayhap she was from Lys? She would ask Marwyn later.

Ever since the Red Priestess had come to King's Landing, Caprica had taken to wearing the color white, and men now spoke of 'Whites' and 'Reds' as factions at the court, since Caprica was now known to not just be the mistress of the Hand of the King, but the unofficial Master of Whispers.

There were fools who spoke of Caprica as having bewitched her father, and the King, that she was this unnatural harlot who was rotting the realm from within for her own benefit.

Arya would concede that Caprica was a master of manipulation and deceit, even how she dressed was part of the murmurery, now in her pregnancy she had taken up more modest styles of fashion, the woman would have done a Septa proud. But dominating a man like her father? Ha! She'd never believe it in a thousand years.

Whatever else came, Arya suspected that her time in King's Landing was coming to an end, she had noticed several unattached men giving her queer looks that discomforted her father, especially when the King mentioned how much like her aunt Lyanna she was beginning to resemble.

Arya welcomed the idea of returning home to Winterfell, the journey home would take her through the Riverlands and perhaps... just perhaps she could find Nymeria.

 _"A penny for your thoughts?"  
_  
Arya glanced behind her, seeing one of the ladies-in-waiting to the new Rose Queen, Taena of Myr nearby, obviously wishing to speak to her.

 _"About what milady?"  
_  
Taena smiled, her dusky and gorgeous face lighting up, _"About the rumors of another war so soon after the last one."_

 _"I have heard them, and I expect this day will prove... Illuminating."_

The Myrish woman laughed quietly at that but said no more, the wife of Lord Merryweather was much more aware than most, she had picked up on what she had been doing, observing and learning how the game of thrones was played.

She reminded Arya of Caprica in a way, both foreign born figures with mysterious pasts, both had attached themselves to powerful lords, both were working for the benefit of the man they had attached themselves too, one was pregnant and the other had already born her husband a son.

However Arya suspected that Taena was currently working as a spy for the Queen, but was so opportunistic that she'd sell out Queen Margaery if it gave her advancement.

Of the two there was no contest, Arya would put her faith in Caprica long before she ever trusted Taena.

As Robert finally concluded that tedious business with the honey merchant, or whatever you called such men, the real meat of the day began to emerge.

As the King began to speak of the lands beyond the Wall, and the perfidious new 'King' that had crowned himself there, Arya's thoughts had turned to home.

She hoped that her brother's were well, the letters from Winterfell had her fearful about Bran, and hoped that the latest addition to the family might bring a smile to them.

Even her favorite sibling Jon.


End file.
